Blood and Debt: War and the Nation-State in Latin America

Our understanding of the rise of the nation-state is based heavily on the Western European experience of war. Challenging the dominance of this model, this text looks at Latin America's much different experience as more relevant to politics today in regions as varied as the Balkans and Sub-Saharan Africa. The book highlights the relatively peaceful history of Latin America from the late eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries, revealing the lack of two critical prerequisites needed for war; a political and military culture oriented toward international violence and the state institutional capacity to carry it out. It examines how war affected the fiscal development of the state and the creation of national identity, using new data such as tax receipts and conscription records. Rather than building nation-states and fostering democratic citizenship, it shows how war in Latin America destroyed institutions and confirmed internal divisions.